Ah, but Kerry was polished and smooth in his delivery; Bush spoke in simple sentences and repeated himself a LOT. And a lot of people look only at delivery and not substance. I think those people (I only hope that it is very few) will be persuaded by Kerry's smoothness to vote for him. W was having to be constantly on the defense; he's too much of a gentleman to put the truth about Kerry out there plainly. I pray that a majority of people watching will have the discerment to see that Bush is RIGHT in his defense and homeland security policies and that Kerry is just a naive, blowhard who WILL resort to lying; he knows W won't.
"Bush spoke in simple sentences and repeated himself a LOT"
Look back at the people who have debated bush and lost - see what they've said about his technique: Stays on topic, repeats same points over and over. Ma Richards has said this about him for years.
People make the mistake of projecting their habits onto others. Few people in the debate target audience are like freepers. They won't spend 90 minutes watching the debates. They may flip by and spend possible 5, 10 or 15 minutes there. THAT is why bush repeats the same things over and over again. He has a message he wants to get out, and he repeats it over and over again, because a lot of the audience won't be watching the next time he says it. They'll be watching the game or trading spaces or whatever else is on cable that night.
Which is exactly the goal in a political debate: Stay on message! Scarborough put it best when he said tonight that experienced campaigners know that there's no such thing as repeating your message too many times.
Ask yourself what words people are likely to remember a week from now? Kerry's "global test," to Kerry's detriment, and Bush's central themes. A week from now, Bush is going to look pretty smart, I'd bet.